It begins at The Embarcadero in front of the Ferry Building at the northeastern edge of the city and runs southwest through downtown, passing the Civic Center and the Castro District, to the intersection with Portola Drive in the Twin Peaks neighborhood.

In 1839, the first street grid was laid in the Mexican trading post of Yerba Buena by Jean Jacques Vioget, largely aligned with the cardinal directions, with blocks measuring 412 by 275 feet (126 by 84 m).

Market Street, which cuts across the city for three miles (4.8 km) from the waterfront to the hills of Twin Peaks, was laid out originally in an 1847 survey by Jasper O'Farrell, a 26-year-old trained civil engineer who had immigrated there.

Market Street was described at the time as an arrow aimed straight at "Los Pechos de la Chola" (the Breasts of the Maiden), now called Twin Peaks.

[7][8] However, the width of Market also aroused the ire of property owners, who felt the new street was excessively wide and potentially encroached on their holdings; they made preparations to lynch O'Farrell.

He rode with all haste to North Beach, took a boat for Sausalito, and thence put distance behind him on fast horses in relay until he reached his retreat in Sonoma.

[10]At the time, the Market Street right-of-way was blocked by a sixty-foot sand dune where the Palace Hotel is now (at the intersection with New Montgomery), and a hundred yards further west stood a second sandhill nearly ninety feet tall.

[11] The first horsecar-powered railway line to open in San Francisco commenced running down the thoroughfare on July 4, 1860, operating under the Market Street Railroad Company.

The Winning of the West bases were designed by sculptor Arthur Putnam and feature three historical subjects: covered wagons, mountain lions, and alternating prospectors and Indians.

[22] Shortly after voters approved the creation of the Bay Area Rapid Transit District in 1962, the report What to Do About Market Street was published by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal Association (SPUR).

A group of businessmen and property owners had commissioned SPUR to lead a team of city planners, designers, and real estate experts to form a plan which would "put new life into Market Street as a center of Bay Area business, shopping, and entertainment.

[26] The San Francisco Municipal Railway streetcars were moved underground as Muni Metro in concert with the development of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in the late 1960s.

[27] On June 4, 1968, voters in San Francisco approved Proposition A, which issued $24.5 million in bonds to pay for the reconstruction and improvement of Market Street to follow the completion of the double-decked subway.

On September 29, 2009, traffic-calming efforts took effect for a six-week test in which private automobiles would be restricted in travelling east from Sixth Street towards the Ferry Building.

[34] A project called Better Market Street was started under Gavin Newsom's administration to improve transportation on the corridor for people who walk, use bicycles, or ride public transit.

In the days of the first United Nations conferences, Anthony Eden, Vyacheslav Molotov, Edward Stettinius, and Georges Bidault rode up Market Street, waving to the crowds of hopefuls.

On Christmas Eve 1910, opera singer Luisa Tetrazzini sang a free outdoor concert to a crowd some estimated at 250,000, following a dispute with Oscar Hammerstein.